There is no Royal Road to Geometry

There is no Royal Road to Geometry

After Eratosthenes discovery, many great voyages were attempted by brave and venturesome sailors. Their ships were tiny and they had only rudimentary navigational instruments. They used dead reckoning and followed coastlines as far as they could. In an unknown ocean they could determine their latitude, but non their longitude, by observing, night after night, the position of the constellations with respect to the horizon. The familiar constellations must have been reassuring in the midst of an unexplored ocean.

There are no Royal Roads to Geometry. Photo by Elena

In addition to Eratosthenes there was Heron of Alexandria, inventor of gear trains and steam engines and the author of Automata, the first book on robots the astronomer Hipparchus, who mapped toe constellations and estimated the brightness of the stars; Euclid, who brilliantly systematized geometry and told his King, struggling over a difficult mathematical problem: “There is no royal road to geometry”.

We have far surpassed the science known to the ancient world, but we are in debt with all of them

and many more…